This Guy Has My MacBook, Caught by Police | Hacker News Reader

This Guy Has My MacBook, Caught by Police

theage.com.au

56 pointsnreece27 comments

For those who think this was an invasion of the thief's privacy, it's nothing compared to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4oB28ksiIo&t=3m12s

How did he know the person who had his Mac was the one who stole it 2 years earlier?

He probably wasn't considering the mac was stolen in Boston and the guy was instead in Vegas.

Reason #1 to always request a receipt when purchasing anything. It's entirely possible that the Cab Driver just thought he was getting a good deal off of craigslist, but, without a receipt, he's now in possession of stolen property.

Also a good reason for the purchaser to visit the seller's place of residence, instead of having them come to your home.

"possession of stolen property" requires the recipient to knowingly accept stolen property; if the recipient didn't know, then they haven't committed any crime (though they will lose the property in question, and have to hope they can get their money back from the seller).

Good luck proving that without a receipt.

... He'd still be in possession of stolen property even with a receipt.

a good reason for the purchaser to visit the seller's place of residence

--or if that's not practical, for the seller to show purchaser his DL.

DL?

Driver's License

Driver's license.

"A representative for the product's London-based developer, Flipcode, did not respond to emails on Wednesday."

This is why you regularly check your general inbox. Guaranteed PR opportunity that was missed by the app developer. A single response would have resulted in a quote and a more elaborate mention of the app.

It's funny to have those response now, given the amount of "this is just a marketing stunt/viral marketing/..." comments on this story previously.

Given the 10 hour difference between the publication's time zone in Melbourne and the developer's in London, it's likely that the email dropped in to their inbox between the hours of 11pm London time (9am in Melbourne) and 4am (1pm in Melbourne, shortly before the article was published).

Even knowing that this story was starting to get some press coverage, would you really have stayed up overnight on the off-chance that someone on the western pacific rim would be the first one to run with the story?

It's actually quite sad you first have to instigate a media racket before the police will even look into your case.

The sad part is the guy in the picture probably didn't actually commit the burglary. It's not uncommon in Bay Area to have your stolen bike / camera / iPods turn up on CL a few hours later. The cabbie probably the MacBook off somebody for cheap.

Don't get me wrong, he got what he deserved, but the true instigator of this crime will probably never be known.

I am surprised he is not worried about getting slapped with an epic lawsuit over this. The guy in the pictures has had his reputation absolutely destroyed, complete with pictures of the inside of his home, pictures of him half-naked and pictures of his sleeping child. If it turns out he had been acting in good faith all along... ouch.

If he indeed bought it off CL, then why would you say "he got what he deserved"?

It's very very obvious when somebody is selling stolen property on CL. No box, manuals, receipt or power adapter? Asking 25% of retail? If nothing else, there is usually some stock picture or none at all, and the spelling/grammar/punctuation are terrible. In short, "you just know."

To answer your question, if you knowingly buy stolen goods, you deserve to be punished. (I emphasize that this whole scenario is just conjecture on my part.)

Edit: also, there's a screen cap of him /erasing the other guy's account/. I mean come on ...

    The laptop's return was the culmination of a one-man crusade of online
    sleuthing, social networking and moments of voyeuristic creepiness 
    aided by the software called Hidden.

This appears to be the software that got the job done: http://hiddenapp.com/

Nothing better than a viral success story to generate press for an app like this.

I'm not quite clear on how this worked. Since the disk wasn't wiped, either the thief would have had to have logged into an existing account or the MacBook didn't have a login requirement.

So tracking software is useful only if you don't require a login on bootup or wakeup?

The best of both worlds is to have a fake system—that is booted automatically, without any password etc. and with installed spyware—alongside your actual OS, encrypted and hidden.

You could even just keep data on your disk and have /boot on a pendrive (or a memory card, which seems more practical).

I'm pretty sure Hidden recommends that you create a guest account, so that the thief has an account to use.

I have a passwordless Guest account set up on both Windows and Linux for Predator. It's possible that as stories like this continue to get publicized thieves will get smarter and start removing or wiping disks, but it seems like a lot of the time they're not nearly that smart.

What is the legality of surveilling somebody and publishing their photos online without their consent?

Issues related to the expectation of privacy will depend on jurisdiction.

But copyright is interesting. Generally, copyright is held by the photographer. Who is the photographer in this case? The one who blindly operated the camera by remote control? Or the one who unknowingly pointed the camera to the subject? Perhaps there is no copyright here.

And now you have to stare at it every day and remember the rigmarole.

Ironically, in the UK, you'd probably get sued by the person who nicked it.

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